Playing Hard To Get

by Grace Octavia

  Troy gave Lucy a look. The cat had long emerged from the bag, saying Lucy’s husband was not Troy’s grandfather.

  “Don’t get on Kyle,” Troy said, watching Kyle walk out of the church with one of the deacons. His eyes were red and he looked around sadly. Troy knew he was looking for her. “He’s just trying not to play sides.” While Troy meant what she was saying to her grandmother, she couldn’t help but feel alienated from and by her husband. She had been open with him about her issues with Myrtle and asked him not to put her on the program. He’d failed to protect her. But she couldn’t say that to Lucy. Once her grandmother hated someone, that was it. And she knew sharing her hurt feelings with Lucy could only lead to the old woman making a phone call.

  “Not trying to play sides?” Lucy asked. “You make it sound like he’s trying to appease both of you.”

  “It’s about me and her,” Troy said, watching her husband and knowing what must be worrying him. “It’s about him and the church. He knows what Sister Glover can do. He was trying to stop it.”

  “Well,” Lucy said, grabbing her granddaughter’s hand and squeezing it, “if he can’t stop it, then you have to. You have to stop her. You have to confront her. Now, I know you’re not a fighter. You’ve always chosen a smile over a fist. But you’re Mary Elizabeth’s child and my grandchild, and that means, dear, there’s fight in you. You’re going to have to find it—if you want to save your marriage, and yourself.”

  

  Nothing in Tamia’s world carried weight. Everything was light. Everything had the ability to change or be changed. A pen. A pillow. A piece of Brillo pad. She would sit for hours thinking about how each thing was a part of the universe, created by the Creator and thus a part of the cycle of change.

  Now she was sitting in her office, contemplating how her door was changing. It opened. It closed. It let people in and out.

  “You okay?” Naudia asked, standing in the doorway.

  Tamia blinked. She hadn’t noticed she was there. Her focus had become so direct, her mind so encased that she could meditate anywhere for any amount of time.

  “Yes,” Tamia said softly.

  Naudia walked into the office and sat down. She knew for a fact that it had been more than fifteen days since Tamia had eaten anything other than lemons and maple syrup. While she had to commend her driven boss for holding on for so long, she had to admit that Tamia was beginning to look a little loopy. She’d lost more than twenty pounds and had stopped shaving her legs. This certainly wasn’t helping her office image. The lack of hair and abundance of colorful fabric in Tamia’s life made her the official topic of the cappuccino-machine crowd. They speculated and spectated and a few even separated themselves from her. And although the chatter was plentiful, not one of them had gone to speak to Tamia about what they claimed was so worthy of their cappuccino-laced concerns. In fact, it would be two more weeks until one of the partners, noticing that Tamia was wearing moccasins, would put in a formal complaint. But by then, she’d be preparing herself for a new life.

  None of this mattered now, though. It wasn’t like Tamia cared or noticed anyway.

  She was too busy contemplating the change of her laptop.

  “I’m happy for you,” Naudia said, “that you’re going through with this.”

  “Thank you,” Tamia said, grinning, but because her face had become so slender with the fast, it looked like she had the biggest smile ever.

  “I mean, it’s a little crazy…and I hope they’re not serving punch at those meetings…but I can see how it’s making you happy.”

  “Was I sad before?” Tamia asked.

  “I don’t think you were sad…I think you were just like the rest of us,” Naudia said. “Okay.”

  “I was.” Tamia nodded. “So, Naudia, what would make you happy? If someone said to you that you should chase bliss relentlessly, that it was the only way you’d be free, what would you do with yourself?”

  “Go to law school,” Naudia said quickly. It was what she thought of every day. What she researched during her lunch break. What she dreamed of. What she knew she could do in the world. “I know I have what it takes. I just need a shot.”

  “What’s holding you back?”

  “Money,” Naudia revealed. “And it’s so messed up that money is what’s stopping me because I know I’d be a great attorney. I know the law. I know I have what it takes to take down these—”

  “You don’t have to tell me that.” Tamia stopped Naudia.

  “What?”

  “I know what you’re capable of,” Tamia said. “Everything I can do, you can do. And probably better.”

  “You really think that?” This was a gargantuan statement coming from someone Naudia respected so much.

  “I know so. I’ve seen so.”

  

  As Tamia mothered her assistant, Tasha fixed her mind on pretending her mother didn’t exist. However, as every New Yorker knows, the last thing you want to do is try to hide something in the big city with the bright lights. As the old saying goes, “Whatever is done in the dark shall always come to light.” Tasha, unfortunately, was doomed to learn this the hard way.

  It was Porsche’s birthday. Her fiftieth. The BIG 5-0. And while Tasha kept telling herself it didn’t matter and she didn’t care and joking that she’d wished her mother was dead anyway, doing all three of these things at one time as she ran her last mile on the treadmill at the gym was proving impossible. Especially since she’d passed a Times Square billboard bearing Porsche’s image with the rest of the cast of Sinfully Yours on the way to the gym and a feature on Page Six of the New York Post announced Porsche’s fortieth birthday to the world. Turning her nose up at the Hollywood literary lie (and the fact that if that was even true Porsche would’ve given birth to her at ten), she chucked the newspaper into the nearest trash can and found an escape in a television that was propped just two feet from her position on the treadmill.

  SOAP OPERA KITTEN TURNS 40 IN DUBAI!

  It was an Access Hollywood story. Porsche’s secretive smile, dipped in a luscious red lipstick came flashing across the screen and Tasha sucked her teeth. The woman on the treadmill beside her watched as Tasha slowed down and struggled to press the little faded remote button to turn the channel.

  “If I had a body like hers, I’d never come to the gym,” the blonde said when Tasha had successfully turned to the Good Times rerun when Willona adopts Penny. “I mean, these celebrities have such perfect bodies, no one can live up to it. I believe most of them have liposuction anyway.”

  “I guess so,” Tasha said, readjusting her earphones to give the woman a signal that she wasn’t in the mood for conversation. Her lipo swelling was catching up to her and in order to stay in the dozen plus pairs of couture jeans she’d purchased to run around the city as she built her management empire, she needed to lose ten pounds in a month. After two kids, it was a straitjacket-worthy idea, but she was up for the challenge. She needed to focus her mind on something other than everything that was going on. Lionel. The girls. And she hadn’t told anyone about what happened at the Roosevelt Hotel with Lynn. She was determined to forget about it herself. Nothing happened, she kept thinking, so there was nothing to talk about. It was a crazy experience and now it was time to move on with plan B. She would use the contacts she’d made at the party and go out on her own. “But Porsche St. Simon doesn’t have much work to do anyway,” the woman went on even though she’d noticed each of Tasha’s cues. “You black women have such lovely skin. She could gain fifty pounds and still look good. If I gain three, everything will start sagging and bagging. Thank God for Botox.”

  After finishing her workout, Tasha was in the locker room, looking at Porsche’s phone number on her cell phone. She hadn’t spoken to her mother since Tiara was born. Lionel was right, it had hurt her like a fresh, thin cut on her hand when Porsche, sounding rushed and tired, came up with a reason not to see her new grandchild. She’d just let Porsche back into her life when s
he had Toni and she’d done the same thing. Pretended to care, promised to be the perfect grandmother, and then walked away like all of Hollywood would dissipate if she took just a little bit of time to be with her daughter, with her family.

  “I don’t need you,” Tasha said to the phone, but that was the opposite of what her heart was feeling. It didn’t matter how much she said and told herself she didn’t need Porsche, the emptiness she felt without her mother there, the emptiness she’d felt all of her life was unbearable. And just then, alone in the city, without any of the things she’d put in her life to fill the unbearable emptiness, it became too much for Tasha to hold inside.

  “Porsche!” she hollered into the phone when she heard her mother’s voice. She was ready to curse her out, dig into her and say all of the hurtful things she was thinking. But then Porsche said something her daughter had only heard from her three, maybe four times in her life.

  “I miss you, baby! How are the girls?”

  Tasha dropped her towel and sat down on the bench in front of her locker.

  “Fine,” she answered.

  “Yeah, I was gonna come out there for my birthday, but—you know.” It was a lie. Tasha knew it, but hearing it, hearing just the promise of it from Porsche, was like a hug she needed. And she did. What Tasha was going through, the things she couldn’t control, was what she needed her mother and her words and her ears and her hugs for. She was supposed to be there. “I was thinking, why don’t we all go to Jamaica this summer—me, you, the girls, even Lionel?” Porsche asked excitedly. “Won’t that be great?”

  “Yeah,” Tasha said, though she knew it would never happen.

  “Wonderful!” Porsche said. “I’ll have my assistant call you to set it up. It’s going right on my calendar. I promise. No excuses.”

  “Well, that’s good, because I really want you to—”

  “Look, honey, I have to go,” Porsche interrupted Tasha. “I’m getting on a jet. My new boyfriend is flying me to Paris for the afternoon. We’re in Dubai. Can you believe that?”

  “Yeah, I was watching it on the news—”

  “Gotta go, love,” Porsche said quickly. “Send my love to Toni and Tiana!”

  There was a click and the line went dead.

  “Tiara,” Tasha said to no one. “Her name is Tiara. Not Tiana.”

  

  They were Fola, Bolade, and Nijala. In that order, Fatimah, Tamia, and Tanya were given their Yoruba-based names upon how their older sisters saw them interacting within the community. Fatimah, Fola—Baba explained after their lips had been rubbed with water, palm oil, a kola nut, honey, pepper, salt, and fish—was named for always respecting her elders. Tamia, Bolade, came to the Freedom Project with great honor. Tanya, Nijala, who was always smiling and cheering for her sisters, no matter the issue was named for bringing peace.

  “Ase,” the big sister said, happily calling each of the women on the journey by their nicknames.

  Though Malik had been keeping his distance from Tamia’s process, meeting her only to discuss his case during the afternoon before she met with her sisters or afterward as they rode the subway to see Badu and Ms. Lolly—who were still in a subway turf war—Tamia often saw him waiting outside of the work room where she met with Baba.

  

  “You could’ve come in,” Tamia said, walking into the basement library where she found Malik studying after her naming ceremony. He was sitting at a workbench, surrounded by books. “Baba said the community was to be there.”

  “I was there.” Malik smiled, but he didn’t look up at Tamia. As she was changing how she looked, how he looked at her was changing too. He didn’t notice it at first. He’d always thought she was a beautiful woman, and after she cut her hair he saw that she was even more than that. It was nice. But it was common. Most of the women who came into the project and began to accept their own beauty grew more beautiful in his eyes. He thought this was the same with Tamia. But one afternoon, as she sniffed an African musk Badu had rubbed on her wrist, Malik saw the side of her neck. As she laughed with Badu at something, she turned her head and it was there, defenseless, soft, brown. It made him feel hungry and then warm. He looked away fast. He asked Badu if he would sell him a vial of the musk. That night he would go home and smell it, thinking about Tamia again.

  “But not inside,” Tamia said. “You didn’t come inside.”

  “How do you know you weren’t the one outside and I was inside, my Nubian sister?” Malik joked, using the militant voice that always made Tamia laugh.

  It worked.

  “You’re so silly,” she said, giggling. “What are you reading?” She sat down beside him on the bench.

  “Not reading, checking the stacks,” Malik started and Tamia could tell he was about to go on one of his passionate riffs. While she’d thought they were silly before, now she found them comforting. His dedication, how he lost his mind in something he cared for so much made her believe in dreams again. “You ever hear about what happened in Philadelphia in 1985 when eleven black people were killed?”

  “No,” Tamia said.

  “The government bombed the headquarters of Project MOVE, a militant organization,” Malik said. “They used helicopters to drop bombs on the roof of the building. And when the fire started spreading, the mayor, a damn brother, said, ‘Let it burn!’ Eleven people died that day. Five were children.”

  “That’s awful,” Tamia said.

  “You know, it is awful, but what’s more awful is that most people don’t know anything about it. People in Philly. Black people. Militant people,” Malik said. “We can fight for freedom all we want, but if we don’t record our own history, none of what we’ve done will matter.”

  “I disagree. I understand what you mean, but I have to tell you, it doesn’t matter if not one book records change. If it happens, it happened.”

  “I think you’re beautiful,” Malik said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “A long time ago, I told you that I thought you were beautiful the way all black women are beautiful.” Malik looked into Tamia’s eyes. “Right now I want you to know I think you’re beautiful. Not just outside. But your mind. You impress me every day.”

  Tamia wasn’t sure how to respond to this, so she didn’t. She kissed him.

  She kissed him and when she tried to move away she realized Malik’s hands were around her neck and holding her to him. In his lips she felt the hunger and heat he’d fought with the day she smelled African musk in the subway. When they parted, it was as if they were still together.

  “What was that?” Tamia asked, covering her mouth. “What just happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Malik said. “I kissed you.”

  “No, I kissed you.”

  “I wanted you to kiss me.” Malik looked at her like he was coming in for another kiss.

  “But…” She moved back. “But we can’t. We…What about Ayo?”

  “Ayo?”

  “I know you have something with her.”

  “I had something with her for a very long time,” Malik said. “But I think that very long time is all we have.”

  “I knew it,” Tamia said.

  “You knew what?” Malik asked. “You have somebody too. I know it. Probably some monkey-suit-wearing fraternity boy in the city.”

  Tamia lowered her eyes

  “Now, I knew it,” Malik said. “You come up here to Harlem to play, but your real thing is hidden in a high-rise. Is he paying your rent?”

  “No, my mortgage,” Tamia said curtly before getting up.

  “I’m sorry,” Malik said. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m frustrated.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve been thinking about that kiss for a long time. But I know we can’t act on it,” he explained. “We can’t ruin what we have.”

  “What we have?” Tamia’s toes were tingling just considering the idea that they had something between them.

  “Our relationship,” he s
aid. “You’re my attorney. You have to represent me.”

  “Oh, yes,” Tamia said, thinking maybe her toes had just fallen off. “We wouldn’t want to ruin that.”

  

  For more than a week, the flesh beneath Troy’s skin was boiling with such anger, such fury at Myrtle’s display at the church that it was becoming impossible for her to follow her desire to remain composed and poised as the immaculate First Lady she wanted to be. The questions Lucy had raised about Myrtle’s intentions pricked into her mind like thorns each night and she could hardly rest without thinking about Myrtle’s nerve and what she might be planning next.

  And then, one morning after a sleepless night when the sun hit the concrete outside of the Hall brownstone, Kyle watched his wife rise, wash, and dress in a matter of minutes.

  “Where are you going?” Kyle asked, sure he was still dreaming. Troy wasn’t exactly an early riser and her daily coiffing routine meant that leaving the bedroom before 10 a.m. was nearly impossible.

  “Nowhere,” Troy said, slipping on her heels…and then switching to sneakers and then back to heels. “See you later.” She kissed him on the forehead and ran out as if she’d decided on the sneakers.

  There was an early-morning line at the bank where Myrtle was manager, but Troy’s nerve pushed her past the tired crowd, through customer support, and before Myrtle’s receptionist.

  “Can I help you?” the frail assistant asked, her hands still in position on the keyboard, her eyes peeking out over the rims of glasses that seemed to weigh her head down.

  “I need to see the manager,” Troy requested.

  “Are you okay? Is there anything I can help you with?”

  “Yes,” Troy snapped, “you can help me by getting the manager. That would be what I initially requested.” While Troy wasn’t ever really great at defending herself, when she finally invoked this fierce strength that every woman in her family had before her, it came out in great big waves of fire, threatening to burn anyone in her path.